The Death of Word?
Is the era of Microsoft Word and other word processors coming to an end? Well, I wouldn't say quite yet but there are clues that it could be pushed out by new some promising new technology. My sister told me about an online word processor and I decided to try it out since I often email documents to myself in order to print them on campus.
Writely.com, recently acquired by Google, offers a unique online word processor ideal for collaborative writing efforts. A user can upload an already existing document or write it directly online. Then, you can save it, tag it for organizational purposes, post it to a blog, or invite others to view or edit your document.
I recently used this program for a group project I am working on for another class and it was actually pretty great. However, we did find that some of the formatting that the online word processor did to be a bit weird/troublesome (i.e. - we had trouble controlling the bullets function from going crazy and doing what it wanted haha). It's probably better at this point to upload a document and use it that way. However, it was really cool because we were all able to type in the same document at the same time without having to email the document to one another after every revision.
As of now, people can sign in using their Google ID's. I will be interested to see if they incorporate some kind of social networking aspect (like every other site these days). But there's not "profile" or "about me" section--YET.
The program is still in beta so like I said it still needs some more work. However, with Google's backing (financially and otherwise), it will certainly improve and best of all it's FREE! :)
